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Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy

The first comprehensive study on the role of Italian fashion and Italian literature, this book analyzes clothing and fashion as described and represented in literary texts and costume books in the Italy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy emphasizes the centrality of Italian literature and culture for understanding modern theories of fashion and gauging its impact in the shaping of codes of civility and taste in Europe and the West. Using literature to uncover what has been called the ‘animatedness of clothing,’ author Eugenia Paulicelli explores the political meanings that clothing produces in public space.

At the core of the book is the idea that the texts examined here act as maps that, first, pinpoint the establishment of fashion as a social institution of modernity; and, second, gauge the meaning of clothing at a personal and a political level. As well as Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier and Cesare Vecellio’s The Clothing of the Renaissance World, the author looks at works by Italian writers whose books are not yet available in English translation, such as those by Giacomo Franco, Arcangela Tarabotti and Agostino Lampugnani.

Paying particular attention to literature and the relevance of clothing in the shaping of codes of civility and style, this volume complements the existing and important works on Italian fashion and material culture in the Renaissance. It makes the case for the centrality of Italian literature and the interconnectedness of texts from a variety of genres for an understanding of the history of Italian style, and serves to contextualize the debate on dress in other European literatures.

Eugenia Paulicelli is Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, USA. She directs

two programs in Fashion Studies: a PhD concentration and an MA in Liberal Studies.

VISUAL CULTURE IN EARLY MODERNITY

Series Editor: Allison Levy

A forum for the critical inquiry of the visual arts in the early modern world, Visual Culture in Early Modernity promotes new models of inquiry and new narratives of early modern art and its history. We welcome proposals for both monographs and essay collections which consider the cultural production and reception of images and objects. The range of topics covered in this series includes, but is not limited to, painting, sculpture and architecture as well as material objects, such as domestic furnishings, religious and/or ritual accessories, costume, scientific/medical apparata, erotica, ephemera and printed matter. We seek innovative investigations of western and non-western visual culture produced between 1400 and 1800.

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy From Sprezzatura to Satire

Eugenia Paulicelli

V

© Eugenia Paulicelli 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Eugenia Paulicelli has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818 Surrey, GU9 7PT USA England

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Paulicelli, Eugenia, 1958–

Writing fashion in early modern Italy: from sprezzatura to satire / by Eugenia Paulicelli. pages cm—(Visual culture in early modernity)

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-1170-9 (hardcover: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4724-3603-0 (ebook)—ISBN 978-

1-4724-3604-7 (epub) 1. Fashion writing—Italy—History—16th century. 2. Fashion writing—Italy—History—17th

century. 3. Fashion in literature. I. Title.

TT504.6.I8P38 2014 746.9’20945—dc23

2013047639

ISBN 9781472411709 (hbk) ISBN 9781472436030 (ebk – PDF) ISBN 9781472436047 (ebk – ePUB)

To the loving memory of my mother, Solo per sempre.

A mia madre, Solo per sempre.

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Contents

List of Illustrations   ix Acknowledgments   xiii

Part I: The Cultures of Fashion

1 Moda and Moderno  � 3

2 The Book of the Courtier and the Discourse on Fashion: Sprezzatura, Gender, “National Identity”   51

Part II: The Fabric of Cities: Nations, Empire in Costume Books by Cesare Vecellio and Giacomo Franco

3 Mapping the World: Dress in Cesare Vecellio’s Costume Books (1590, 1598)   89

4 Power, History and Dress in Giacomo Franco’s Costume Plates (1610–1614)   127

Part III: Beyond Sprezzatura: Fashion as Excess

5 Sister Arcangela Tarabotti: Hair, Wigs and other Vices   177

6 La Moda and its Technologies: Agostino Lampugnani’s La Carrozza da nolo, ovvero del vestire e usanze alla moda (The rented carriage or of clothing and fashionable habits, 1648–1650)    205

Bibliography   225 Index   253

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List of Illustrations

Color Plates

1 Procession of the Doge in Piazza San Marco in Venice and his Entourage in Piazza San Marco, by Cesare Vecellio (1521–1601), De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti / The Bridgeman Art Library

2 Map of Venice, from “Civitates Orbis Terrarum,” c. 1572 (colored engraving), by Georg Braun (1541–1622) and Frans Hogenberg (1535–1590), Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

3 Pallas Athena, c. 1531–1538 (oil on canvas), by Francesco Mazzola Parmigianino, 1503–1540, The Royal Collection, 2011 / Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library

4 Young woman at her toilette (detail), by Giovanni Bellini (1430–1516), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria / Nimatallah / Art Resource, NY

5 Diana transforming Actaeon into a stag (fresco from the room of Diana and Actaeon), by Francesco Mazzola Parmigianino (1503–1540), Museo Rocca

San Vitale, Fontanellato, Italy, Scala / Art Resource, NY

6 Tight Lacing, or Fashion before Ease, c. 1777 (colored engraving), from the original picture by John Collet, in the possession of Carington Bowles. Lower right is the monkey pointing to a publication entitled “Fashion’s Victim,” a satire. Hand-colored mezzotint. With kind permission of Philip Bret-Day

7 Portrait of Mattias de’ Medici, c. 1660 (oil on canvas 75×60 cm), by Justus Sustermans (1597–1681), Galleria Palatine, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY

8 Courtesan in a Carriage, from Mores Italiae, 1575, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Black and White Figures

1 Moda and Moderno

1 Donzella Venetiana in nero, 37 (A Venetian maiden in black), c. 1576, from Mores Italiae, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italyx

2 The Book of the Courtier and the Discourse on Fashion: Sprezzatura, Gender, “National Identity”

2 Man with a Glove, c. 1520, by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1487–1576), Musée du Louvre, Paris, Gianni Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY

3 Mapping the World: Dress in Cesare Vecellio’s Costume Books (1590, 1598)

3 Frontispiece of the 1590 edition of Degli Habiti antichi e moderni di diverse parti del mondo, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

4 Frontispiece of the 1598 edition of Degli Habiti antichi e moderni di diverse parti del mondo, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

5 Tavola delle cose notabili (Table of the most noticeable things) from Cesare Vecellio’s 1590 edition of Habiti, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

6 Tavola dei nomi propri (Table of proper names) from Cesare Vecellio’s 1598 edition of Habiti, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

7 The Pope, c. 1590, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

8 The Doge, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

9 Armed Soldier (uomini d’arme— armed men), by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

10 Garrison Soldier, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

11 Young Man from Mexico, 1598, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

12 Peasant Women, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

13 Venetian Clothing and the Beginning of Sleeves a Comeo (sleeves very full beneath the elbow), by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

14 Summer Clothing of Married Neapolitan Noblewomen of High Rank, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

15 The Clothing of Noble Girls from Naples, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

16 Prospective of Piazza San Marco, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

17 A Turkish Woman, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

List of Illustrations xi

18 The Favorite of the Turkish Sultan, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

19 Lady from the Seraglio, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

20 Roman Women of Artisan and Plebeian Rank, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

21 Courtesans at the time of Pius V, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

22 Modern Courtesan, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

4 Power, History and Dress in Giacomo Franco’s Costume Plates (1610–1614)

23 Frontispiece from Habiti d’huomini et donne venetiane: con la processione della Serma Signoria et altri particolari cioè trionfi feste et cerimonie pubbliche della nobilissima città di venetia, 1609, by Giacomo Franco in Frezzaria all’insegna del Sole, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

24 Giacomo Franco depicts a scene of one of the balls and feasts in honor of princes, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

25 The Fleets Face Each Other, “Battle of Lepanto,” Habiti, 1609, by Giacomo Franco, Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

26 Sebastiano Venier, Habiti, 1609, by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

27 A Venetian General in War Time, Habiti, 1590, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

28 Armour of Ottoman manufacture, Turkey, sixteenth century, Stibbert Museum, Florence

29 Beglierbei or Armed Men, by Cesare Vecellio, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

30 Helmet of Ottoman manufacture, sixteenth century, Stibbert Museum, Florence

31 Female corset in iron, Italy, sixteenth century, Stibbert Museum, Florence

32 Colletto, 1595–1610, Italy, Stibbert Museum, Florence

33 Portrait of the Count Galeazzo Sanvitale, 1524, by Francesco Mazzola Parmigianino, National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples, Alinari / Art Resource, NY

34 The Gran Consiglio, Habiti, 1609, by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italyxii

35 Il Principe eletto (The elected prince), by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

36 Il gioco del calcio (The game of soccer), by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

37 Regata cittadina, Habiti, 1609, by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

38 Processione, Habiti, 1609, by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

39 Charlatans, Habiti, 1609, by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

40 Frontispiece of Il Ballarino, 1581, by Fabritio Caroso, illustration by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

41 From Il Ballarino, 1581, by Fabritio Caroso, illustration by Giacomo Franco, The General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

42 Woman with Two Mirrors, by Giacomo Franco, Stibbert Museum, Florence

43 Olimpia and Bireno, by Giacomo Franco, Stibbert Museum, Florence

44 Actaeon, by Giacomo Franco, Stibbert Museum, Florence

45 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1524, by Francesco Mazzola Parmigianino, Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna, Foto Marburg / Art Resource, NY

5 Sister Arcangela Tarabotti: Hair, Wigs and Other Vices

46 Miss Prattle consulting Doctor Double Fee about her Pantheon head dress, 1772, anonymous. Published by Carington Bowles, mezzotint. With kind permission of Philip Bret-Day

6 La Moda and its Technologies: Agostino Lampugnani’s La Carrozza da nolo, ovvero del vestire e usanze alla moda (The rented carriage or of clothing and fashionable habits, 1648–1650)

47 The first page from the 1650 Milan edition of La Carrozza da nolo, ovvero del vestire e usanze alla moda, which includes the addition of a second text, La Carrozza di ritorno (Milan: 1650), by Agostino Lampugnani, Biblioteca Aprosiana Provinciale in Ventimiglia, Italy

48 Marie de Medicis (1573–1642), Queen’s Consort and later Regent of France from 1610, with the dauphin Louis aged three (twenty-seven months as shown in inscription), later King Louis XIII of France. Painted in 1603 by Charles Martin (1562–1646), Chateau de Blois, Gianni Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY

Acknowledgments

Each book has its own story, and this book has a long one. It started many years ago and has travelled to various places and countries. However, the best way to unwrap this story is through what follows in the chapters and images. My hope is that this story will reveal my multidisciplinary interest in studying fashion, its profound academic relevance, its interrelations with the construction of national identity and character and of nationhood within a global context during the process of formation of European identity and colonial empires. I found the case of Italy particularly compelling for its cultural richness, intricacies, beauty and contradictions.

There are many people who have shared this passion with me through conversations or invitations to give lectures and seminars that have, in ways too numerous to mention, enriched my research.

During my sabbatical leave spent in Bologna in 2006–2007, I very much appreciated the feedback of and kind invitations to give lectures extended to me by Vera Fortunati, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Lucia Corrain, Simonetta Franci, Paolo Fabbri, Patrizia Calefato, Louise Wallenberg and her colleagues from the University of Stockholm, as well as the students of the seminar I taught there at the then newly formed graduate program in Fashion Studies. Zygmunt Baranski, Robert Gordon and Helena Sanson from Cambridge University also invited me to lecture. Special thanks also goes to Marco Belfanti with whom I had a number of encouraging and stimulating conversations at the beginning of this project. My thanks also go to Giorgio Riello and to Ann R. Jones for their feedback on an earlier version of the chapter on Cesare Vecellio.

I wish to thank my colleagues and students from Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center; thanks also go to the various PSC CUNY Research Awards I have received over the years to support the research for this book; and to Dean William McClure for a research enhancement grant toward the cost of illustrations.

At Queens College, I would like to thank Alexandra De Luise and Suzanna Simor of the Rosenthal Library, but especially Amy Winter, Director of the Godwin-Ternbach Museum who invited me to present my work on costume

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italyxiv

books at the Museum and with whom I collaborated, along with Elizabeth Lowe, on the exhibition and conference on “The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization.”

At the CUNY Graduate Center, I have appreciated greatly the conversations I have had with Janet Cox-Rearick, Joseph Glick, Clare Carroll and Martin Elsky. Special thanks go to William Fisher with whom I designed and taught the seminar “Clothing Cultures in Early Modern Italy and England,” the ideal platform for bringing this project to its fruition, and to the students who took the course. I also would like to acknowledge Susan O’Malley for inviting me to speak at a meeting of the Society of Women in the Renaissance; Mihoko Suzuki, whom I met on that occasion, for her enthusiasm and support for the project; Bella Mirabella at NYU for inviting me to contribute a paper to her collection on Ornamentalism and being so supportive of my work; Jane Tylus, and Virginia Cox, both from NYU, and who gave me encouragement to pursue the project.

My gratitude goes to the kind help of the staff in various libraries: the Archiginnasio in Bologna; the library at the Stibbert Museum, especially Simona Di Marco; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, especially Anne Marie Menta; the Biblioteca Aprosiana in Ventimiglia; and the Archivio di Stato in Mantua. Their help was precious at every stage of the long process that brought this book to light. Any errors there may be are entirely my responsibility.

Some of the material contained in the book has already been published in the form of much earlier versions of the present chapters as articles in the following journals and edited volumes:

“Fashion, Cultural Anxiety & Modernity in the Italian Baroque” in Romance Notes, O. Estrada ed., Special Issue on “The Survival of Literature in the Age of Globalization” 50: 1 (2010): 35–46.

“From the Sacred to the Secular: The Gendered Geography of Veils in Italian Cinquecento Fashion,” in Bella Mirabella, ed., Ornamentalism: the Art of Renaissance Accessories (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), pp. 40–58.

“Geografia del vestire nei libri di costume di Cesare Vecellio,” in Moda e Moderno. Dal Medioevo al Rinascimento, Eugenia Paulicelli, ed. (Rome: Meltemi, 2006).

“Mapping the World: The Political Geography of Dress in Cesare Vecellio’s Costume Books,” in The Italianist 28 (2008): 24–53; reprinted in Global History of Fashion. A Reader, Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeill, eds. (London & New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 138–59.

“The Rhetoric & Politics of Appearance in the Italian Cinquecento,” in Jane Tylus, Paul Ferrara, & Eugenio Giusti, eds., Medusa’s Gaze: Essays on Gender, Literature, & Aesthetics in the Italian Renaissance. In Honor of Robert Rodini (West Lafayette, IN: Bordighera Press, 2004), 127–43.

Acknowledgments xv

I would like to express my deepest thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript. I greatly appreciated the care and the attention they dedicated to my work. The whole editorial process has taken the form of a wonderful, stimulating and enriching dialogue. Thank you also to Erika Gaffney and everyone at Ashgate for their enthusiasm about the project from day one.

This book would have not seen the light without one person who has never stopped believing in it, encouraging, discussing and supporting it in all its stages until the very end. To David Ward, my husband, a heartfelt thank you for being there for me even in one of my most trying moments in August 2013.

To our daughter Anna, thank you for sharing your own version of sprezzatura.

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Part I The Cultures of Fashion

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Moda and Moderno

Fashion is not linked to such and such a particular form of clothing but rather is exclusively a question of rhythm, a question of rate in time.

Roland Barthes1

If fashion is a paradigm of the capitalist processes which inform modern sensibilities, then it is also a vibrant metaphor for modernity itself.

Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans2

La Moda and il Modo

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy focuses on clothing and fashion as they are described and represented in literary texts and costume books in the Italy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My aim is to emphasize the centrality of Italian literature and culture for understanding modern theories of fashion and gauging its impact on the shaping of codes of civility and taste not only in Italy but beyond its borders in Europe and the West. Using literature to uncover what Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones have called the “animatedeness of clothes,” my hope is to underscore the political meanings that clothing produces and has always produced in public space. The meanings of Italian fashion in early modernity speak beyond the confines of Italian Studies to reach out towards a broader horizon that connects the local with the global, the intimate with the public.3

As a complex system of codes, as well as a growing manufacturing industry, fashion was textualized in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the discourse on dress and style that is elaborated in the texts examined in this study. Italy became the central location in which the codification of dress was accomplished in a modern way. This does not exclude the fact that in other countries such as France and England, as we will see further on, we find sumptuary laws and satires that will focus on dress.

At the core of my investigation is the idea that these texts, starting with Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, act as maps through and with which it is possible, first, to pinpoint the establishment of fashion as a social

1

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy4

institution of modernity; and second, to register the meanings clothing had at a personal and political level. My focus on what might be called fashion literature does not imply establishing a hierarchy of the verbal over the visual or to divorce the object from the discourse about it. Rather, my intent here is twofold: on the one hand, to see how through literature and the emotionality in the texts I examine objects come alive; and on the other, to emphasize the key role that literature and texts played in the two centuries I am concerned with (a role they still play in our own age of the digital revolution). Words, and language in general, share with fashion and clothing a world of materiality and practices that are embedded in a network of relationships. These relationships take on material form through the backbone of fashion: namely, image and text.

By the “animatedness of clothes,” I mean how memories and the emotional charge clothing produces are materialized through representation. Objects, then, have both a social life and an emotional one. Taking this into account, one can, as it were, see through the folds of dress and experience clothing at both the personal and the political level. Literally and symbolically, dress has close links with embodiment, connecting it both to the outer world and the most hidden and intimate spaces of the wearer. It is in literature, I argue, that we can observe the textual interplay through which these subtle mechanisms are played out.

The theorization of the dressed body and the recognition of the affective power of objects and clothing come to the fore in early modernity. Italy is the place where the first attempts are made to codify dress and habits. This awareness, combined with the fear and anxiety over dress as unreliable identifiers of self, are visible in the various

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